By Tirthankar Mitra
KOLKATA: Kolkata’s streets are not just thoroughfares. They are living chronicles of the city’s souls. Kolkata or Calcutta as it was known then may have been “chance erected, chance directed”, but its streets are not named thus. The city father’s of yore have had a wide choice to pick the names of the pathways of Kolkata and did their job.
The city has vast array of illustrious sons and daughters after whom it’s streets are named. Poets, academics, freedom fighters and cultural icons are among the eminent Kolkatans whose names adorn the roads, rows and avenues linking one part of the city to the other.
There have been renaming of streets too. But in a sensible decision, Kolkata Municipal Corporation have chosen to display both the names. This year witnessed a regime change. The powers that be at the helm of affairs are a zealous lot. But an excess of zeal sometimes leads to mistakes. This zeal can be traced against a particular community and almost everything associated with it are being renamed.
An inaccuracy has surfaced in the renaming drive. The first road to be renamed by Kolkata Municipal Corporation is Suhrawardy Avenue in Park Circus area, a tony locality of Kolkata. It has been renamed Gopal Mukherjee Road. Chief minister, Suvendu Adhikari stated in unambiguous terms that the renaming of the road named after Suhrawardy, the Premier as the chief minister of a province was styled during pre-independence period.
Demanding creation of Pakistan, Suhrawardy had misused state power to orchestrate the killing of Hindu citizens from August 16, 1946 which continued for days thereafter.. He had overseen the violence known as Great Calcutta Killing. Naming the road after Gopal Mukherjee was retaliatory as he defended Hindus as well as some Muslims against the violence. Here comes the overzealousness and the mistake there from.
The renaming would have been appropriate had the thoroughfare been named after Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy who engineered the communal carnage. But the road has been named after Huseyn’s uncle, Hassan Suhrawardy a surgeon and the first Muslim vice-chancellor of Calcutta University.
The history of Kolkata’s streets is fascinating. But the gaps in municipal record keeping are not be lost sight of. The attempt to rewrite history is not uncommon. But to rewrite a non-existent history is comic. Nothing more has been reported on this matter. But chief minister Adhikari seems to have embarked on a course to change road names having declared no street in the city will have Pathan or Mughal names.
A Padma Shree-awarded monk from Bahrampur will head the renaming panel. Kolkatans are in the dark about his knowledge about the city streets and the origin of their names. But the process seems to be an attempt to rewrite Kolkata’s history. It is a toss up whether basis of renaming streets will be racial or religious.
Earlier governments have changed roads with colonial names. Thus Sarat Bose Road is now what was once Lansdowne Road though Park Street is hardly ever addressed as Mother Teresa Sarani. The names of metro railway stations are another case in point. Names of writers, leaders and cultural icons from the state adorn them
Renaming often has political reasons. But names are sometimes changed because ruling politicians regard them negatively. It seems to be the case in the declaration and deed of chief minister Adhikari. But then can he change public memory? Old street names persist in collective oral memory. It is different from that intended by the rulers.
Earlier, the Left Front government and then Trinamool Congress government changed many names of many streets. But those change had no religious or racial contours. But the present policy of the Suvendu Adhikari government is to exercise the hard Hindutve by removing the names of anyone with Muslim names without taking into account their contribution to Kolkata’s history and social life. For Bengal, this is a time for a big cultural fall as the renaming task has been given to a hardcore RSS man. (IPA Service)
